The Amenokal does not seem to have had a fixed revenue. He lived principally on the presents given to him by the tribes on the occasion of his accession, and more especially by those tribes which owe allegiance directly to himself. He was entitled to collect a tax on foreign merchandise entering the city and a tithe from certain servile tribes in the southern parts of Air.[101] In addition he had certain perquisites in the shape of judicial fines imposed on individuals and tribes, and a revenue from legitimate trading with Bilma during the great salt caravans.
In considering the history of Agades one cannot fail to be struck by the peculiarity of the site.
Elsewhere in North Africa, where any of the great caravan roads pass through areas of fertility which break up the journeys into sections, towns and cities, in some cases of considerable magnitude, have grown up. Where these settlements are near the margin of belts of permanent sedentary inhabitation, they play the part of termini or ports for the trans-desert traffic. They have become markets and the seats of the transport and produce brokers, a development which has its parallels in Arabia and Central Asia. There are many instances in Northern Africa of such terminal points becoming large and important centres: some of the more active of these “ports,” as they may be called, in the north are Sijilmasa, Wargla, Ghadames, Tripoli, Orfella and Benghazi. Corresponding with them at the southern end of the various roads are Timbuctoo, Gao, Sokoto, Katsina and Kano.[102] In addition to that there are also the true Cities of the Desert. They have arisen in places where caravans can call a halt to rest and replenish food supplies, where water is plentiful, and sometimes also, where these requisites are present, at the intersection of important routes. These settlements are like island coaling stations in maritime navigation, but they are not termini; they are particularly interesting ethnologically, for they often mark the ends of stages where the transport of merchandise changes hands. At these points one tribe or race hands over its charge to another group of people. They are thus entrepôts where goods are discharged and reshipped—not markets, but broking centres where the transport contractors and merchants who live at either end of the routes have their agents. A money market often develops, but the local trade is small, for it is confined to the requirements of the place and immediate neighbourhood. At all costs, either by means of a strong local government or by mutual consent, tribes which elsewhere may be at war with one another must be compelled to meet in peace to pursue their lawful occasions. The essentials for the growth of such centres are invariably the presence of water, pasture and, to a lesser extent, food. Where these factors can be obtained at one definite point only, the centre is fixed, whereas if there are several places all more or less equally convenient for the traffic, the settlement has a tendency to move under the influence of political changes. In Tuggurt, Laghuat and Ghat may be found instances where the centre has been unable to shift on account of geographical conditions; but in the Tuat-Tidikelt area the most important town of In Salah has had many rivals, which have prevented it acquiring the same compactness or prominence as, for instance, the city of Ghat. At the latter place a large permanent water supply in an arid country practically limited the choice of sites to one spot. A commercial city of paramount importance, if of no great size, sprang up in the earliest times and continued uninfluenced by political vicissitudes. As an entrepôt of commerce where there was peace at all times among the local population, where feuds and racial hostility were set aside within its precincts, where free trade was the oldest tradition and where an efficient municipal organisation did not seek to extend its influence far beyond the walls, Ghat developed a government similar to that of an autonomous Hanseatic town. Ghat is the most interesting of all the cities of the desert, but the decline of caravan trade has brought ruin to its people and war among the tribes, which no longer have the material incentive of trade to refrain from fighting.
On the eastern of the two central roads across the Sahara there is a stage where one would expect to find a town like Ghat, for to the south on both these routes there is a tract of desert to be crossed before reaching Kawar or Air respectively. But in the Eastern Fezzan the choice of locality was not restricted by geographical and economic considerations, and Murzuk, as the counterpart in modern times of Ghat, has consequently not always been the most important centre of the area. In early classical times Garama, now known as Jerma, some sixty miles to the north of Murzuk, was the capital of the Garamantian kingdom. When Jerma was destroyed by the Arabs in the seventh century, Zuila, probably the Cillala of the Romans, became the capital of the Eastern Fezzan, maintaining its supremacy even after conquest by the Beni Khattab in the tenth century. When in the fourteenth century the Fezzan was overrun by the people of Kanem the capital again moved, this time to Traghen.
Air is the next stage on the road to the Sudan after crossing the desert to the south of Ghat. The requisites of water, pasture and food are found all over this vast oasis; the principal settlement might therefore be presumed to have changed its site under the influence of politics, and in a great measure this has happened, but the largest settlement in the country, the City of Agades, is comparatively modern and appears to owe its existence to political rather than to economic reasons.
Standing on the north side of the valley which is named after it, Agades is in one sense a City of the Desert, since it lies on the edge of a Saharan oasis. In so far as it is a true desert city at all, it is the greatest of them, but, as we shall see, it has not quite the same characteristics as its smaller rivals. Ghat, before the war, was said to number less than 4000 people, but may have attained double this figure at one time; the population of Murzuk was variously estimated at 2800 by Barth and at 6500 by Nachtigal; Ghadames is believed to have a population of about 7000. But Agades in the days of its prosperity must have contained not less than 30,000 inhabitants.[103] By 1850 the population had fallen to about 7000; ten years ago the number was estimated at 10,000. To-day there are not 3000 people in the half-ruined city, but the numbers are again increasing since the efflux of population after the 1917 revolution. These astonishing variations in population are a normal feature of desert cities, even as they are of harbours and seaport towns where the places are entirely dependent on conditions of trade, which is affected by political change; in the Sahara the mode of life of the surrounding nomads makes these fluctuations even more conspicuous.
None of the considerations governing the site of other desert cities applies to Agades. It lies on the southernmost foothills of the Air mountains, and in the history of the country there has never been any danger of invasion except from the south. Some of the Tuareg, it is true, gradually penetrated Air from the north, and pushed south by the progressive occupation of the northern mountains, which the original population may not have been sufficiently interested or numerous to occupy and defend. Small raiding parties can always enter the country, but it is certain that with even inconspicuous opposing forces the success of an invading army approaching Air from any direction except the south is out of the question, owing to the difficulties of moving large bodies of men over the appalling desert which separates the plateau from Ahaggar or the Fezzan. The same conditions obtain in the east, and to a great extent in the west also. On the south only is the position rather different. The steppe desert between Air and Damergu is neither so waterless nor so pastureless nor so deep as to preclude military operations from that direction. In point of fact Air was invaded on at least one occasion from that side with conspicuous success.[104] It is therefore anomalous that the capital of the country should have been located on the fringe of the mountains, where every road is defensible, in possibly the most vulnerable position which could have been chosen.
Nor is the explanation to be found in such economic necessity as has dictated the choice of site in other examples of desert cities. Agades is some distance from the great north-south road which runs, and always has run, east of the Central massif of Air, leaving the country on its way to the Sudan at the water of Eghalgawen or Tergulawen. An alternative route to the Sokoto area branching off the main road in Northern Air and descending by the Talak plain and In Gall passes some distance west of the city. No caravan road suitable for heavily-laden camels passes through Agades for the north, owing to the barrier of the Central massifs, through which the tracks are difficult even for mountain-bred camels. The old pilgrim road from Timbuctoo to Cairo enters the western side of the Air plateau at In Gall or further north, and passes to Iferuan and so to Ghat without touching Agades. Ibn Batutah’s route shows that this was so in his day, as it certainly has been the case since then. Caravans from the south crossing the Eastern Desert for Bilma pass across Azawagh to the eastern fringes of Air without going to Agades, which would involve a detour, as was explained in referring to the importance of the well of Masalet.[105]
While the trade routes of the country do not, therefore, provide an adequate justification for the choice of the site, climatic or geographic conditions have equally little bearing, for there are a number of points in Air where the pasture is good and where there is sufficient water to supply the needs of a large settlement. At Agades, as a matter of fact, the water is indifferent; while the surrounding gravelly plain, like the rest of the valley, is only covered with scanty vegetation, the neighbouring Telwa valley contains some pastures, but they are not abundant, and camels in the service of the local merchants have to be sent to feed as much as three or four days distant.
If the conditions which had led to the growth of a city in Air had been of a purely economic order, it might have been anticipated that it would have occupied the site of Iferuan, the first point south of Ghat where a permanent settlement with plentiful water, pasture and land fit for cultivation was possible. So convenient is the Iferuan valley that caravans, in fact, usually do rest there for long periods to allow both men and animals to recuperate after the difficult stage to the north has been negotiated. Or, again, a city might have stood at the eastern end of the River of Agades at the north end of the stage across the Azawagh, although this position would have been less dictated by necessity than the first alternative, since the steppe desert of the south cannot be compared for hardship with the northern waste. It would nevertheless have been convenient, if somewhat exposed to raiding parties, as a point for the concentration of caravans crossing the Eastern Desert to Bilma, or in other words at the branching of the Salt Road and the north-south route. On its present site, Agades is out of the way for travellers from any direction who may be bound beyond the city. Some other explanation must then be found, and it occurred to me only when I had reached the city itself.